The first three panels of page ten are so loose and crude, they barely register as Kirby, and they are inked clumsily to boot. Panel two, featuring the Skull is not as bad as one and three. Panels four through seven are a different matter entirely. These panels definitely look like stronger Kirby drawings.

Panel four looks to me to possibly be the first inking work done on Captain America by Syd Shores. Because Shores later inked artist Al Avison on later issues of the book, I’ve often had some difficulty telling the two apart. In particular, there is a similarity these two artists have in the rendering of faces, particularly in the structure of noses. In this case, I believe this to be Shores, because of a pen technique that I see in panel six. I’m pretty certain that it was Greg Theakston who pointed out to me the fact that Shores tended to use a good deal of what Greg called hay in his inking, which refers to the pen hatching lines that appear at the top of panel six on this page.

The orange jacketed thug in panel seven has a distinctive skull and ear shape that I also associate with Shores and Avison.

Page eleven above also seems to be drawn by Kirby and inked by the same hand as the previous page. In particular, the way Steve Rogers’ face in panel three is rendered reminds me of Shores or Avison. Both inkers had a tendency to slightly turn up the noses of certain characters’ faces, but in my mind Avison was at that point the more accomplished inker, so I will give the attribution to Shores for now.

Page twelve above has more loose Kirby art with what looks again to be Syd Shores inking. There is some hay at the top of panel one and the faces of the gangsters in panel six are again characteristic of that inker.

In my opinion, the quality of the art in this story has deteriorated markedly from the first few pages, grown stronger again on the middle pages that Kirby has inked himself and falls off again at page twelve straight to the end.

Page thirteen is fairly mediocre, loosely drawn by Kirby and probably inked by Shores. There is a nice looming effect in panel three, which is lessened by too low orthogonal perspective lines. It is basically a throw away.